The annual Five-Day Teaching with Writing Seminar offers UMN faculty members a congenial, retreat-like opportunity in which they can focus on course-relevant writing assignments, activities, instruction, and assessments. Based on the premise that writing and text can be defined broadly to include verbal, numeric, figurative, and visualized modes, this seminar is appropriate for instructors across the University's curriculum.
Each participant spends the week focusing on an individual course they teach. We move through a sequence of half-day sessions, identifying course-specific learning goals and logistical exigencies, and, from there, considering modes of writing activity and instruction that support those goals and are both course-relevant and logistically feasible. From there, we look at, develop, and workshop writing assignments and activities as well as approaches to assessing student writing.
By week's end, everyone will have...
- Identified a subset of specific writing abilities they expect students to develop/demonstrate (because no one course can do everything!).
- Designed (or revised) low-stakes and high-stakes writing assignments that stem from course-specific goals and are appropriate to course venues (in-person, hybrid, online).
- Become familiar with strategies for providing students with effective, actionable feedback on their writing.
- Considered a variety of approaches to assessing student texts (including peer response, contracts, and reflective self-assessment) in order to identify one that works well in specific course contexts.
- Been given access to a site loaded with instructional resources.
- Spent five mornings engaged in lively conversation with interesting colleagues from across the disciplines.
Who takes this seminar?
Since 2002, the annual Teaching with Writing seminar has enrolled participants from the following departments:
Academic Health Center | Accounting | Aerospace Engineering | African American & African Studies | Agricultural Education | Agronomy and Plant Genetics | American Studies | Architecture | Art | Art History | Asian & Middle Eastern Studies | Biochemistry | Biology | Chemical Engineering | Chemistry | Civil Engineering | Communication Studies | Computer Science & Engineering | Construction Management | Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature | Curriculum & Instruction | Dental Hygiene | Design, Housing, and Apparel | Ecology, Evolution and Behavior | Economics | Education | Electrical Engineering | English | Epidemiology | Family Social Science | Finance | Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology | Food Science and Nutrition | Forest Resources | French & Italian | Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies | General College | Genetics, Cell Biology and Development | Geography | Global Studies | German, Scandinavian & Dutch | Health Systems Management | History | History of Medicine | History of Science and Technology | Horticultural Science | Industrial and Systems Engineering | Journalism & Mass Communication | Kinesiology | Linguistics | Mathematics | Mechanical Engineering | Medical Laboratory Sciences | Medicine | Microbiology | Music | Nursing | Pharmaceutical Care & Health Systems | Rhetoric | Philosophy | Plant Biology | Preventative Sciences | Political Science | Second Language Acquisition Spanish & Portuguese Studies | Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences | Social Work | Soil, Water, and Climate | Surgery | Theatre Arts & Dance | Veterinary Medicine | Work & Human Resources Education | Writing Studies | Youth Studies
Facilitator
Pamela Flash,
Director, Writing Across the Curriculum;
Co-Director, Center for Writing
Questions?
Contact [email protected]